Randy Couture partners with fantasy MMA website Kountermove

Fantasy MMA has been around in many forms since the sport’s boom in the late 2000s.

Kountermove, a company backed in part by UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture, today launched a website that allows users to draft teams of fighters with a $25,000 “salary cap” and compete against each other.

But in this new style of fantasy league, you can win real cash with your picks, and winners aren’t necessarily the players that pick the most winning fighters.

Fantasy sports is a multi-billion dollar business in the U.S. and draws an estimated 22 percent of males with access to the Internet.

To date, most MMA fantasy leagues are simple pick-ems and are not played for cash. In Kountermove, a statistical approach to play makes it similar to thousands of companies based around other sports that legally allows money to be put on the line.

In a typical game, the player who picks the team that has the best stats at the end of a “season,” or major MMA event. The teams, made up of five fighters, are measured by a series of stats such as takedowns, significant strikes, submission attempts, and of course, a finish. The team with the best stats takes the lead.

That means that even if one of the fighters on your team loses, it’s still possible to win a season. The player who put Chael Sonnen on his team for UFC 117 would actually have a winning fighter because, on paper, Sonnen outperformed Silva.

Users can play for cash with an entry deposit or play for free. Players select games based on entry fee amounts, number of opponents, and whether they’d like to draft from the main or full card of fighters.

Kountermove’s creators hope that the statistical approach to picking teams also encourages players to take a deeper look at fighters and fights that may not receive as much attention as event headliners.

“Doing fantasy football, I got to know second-string running backs really well, where I never would have cared had it not been for fantasy,” Kountermove executive Aaron Ard told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).

Couture, a financial backer and spokesperson for Kountermove, is expected to help promote the brand but will not have any responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the company.

More information can be found on Kountermove.com.
(Pictured: Randy Couture)

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